No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a... ".

Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?

Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

How many of you can still remember:

Nancy Drew

The Hardy Boys

Laurel and Hardy

Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery,

The Lone Ranger

The Shadow Knows

Nellie Bell

Roy and Dale

Trigger and Buttermilk.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?

Remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.

Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?

The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?

War was a card game?

Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?

Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?

Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

***

click for larger image

As hurricane Flossie draws closer it has really developed a punch. Sustained winds of 140mph and gusts to 175mph. The track has shifted slightly north and should now pass Mau'i about 250 miles to the south. It will begin passing over cooler waters today and should weaken a bit. Unless there is a drastic course change, we should just get some high waves and brisk winds. We might lose power, not an uncommon event in the islands. So if I go "off-line" in the middle of the week, you'll understand why and I'll be back as soon as the cable and power are restored. But that probably won't happen.

The "Worst Case Scenario" is if Flossie does what Iniki did 15 years ago, make a 90o right hand turn and head due north. Every structure on Kaua'i was damaged in 1992 and it took almost 10 years to rebuild.